Yesterday I was lucky enough to attend the UK launch of IBMs new
PureSystems & was involved in the Social Media taking place on the day. IBM
had announced the new system the day before, & a live webinar was held at
7pm GMT. This blog is slightly longer than my usual ones, but it was just such
an interesting day that I wanted to share all of my learning.

The UK launch event was extremely well attended, with every seat
in the auditorium filled. It was kicked off by Stephen Leonard, Chief Executive,
IBM UK, discussing the agenda for the morning & introducing the WW experts
that would be presenting a deeper dive of PureSystems later in the day.

Stephen spoke about the “New Era of Computing”, & the
emergence of a “number of phenomena” which are changing the world we live in.
Driving this change are the globalisation & digitalisation of the world.
This “digitalisation of the world gives us an opportunity to look at the
systems that make the world work in a different way”. Stephen continued to talk
about how, in computing terms, the traditional views of back & front office
tasks are no longer valid, & these two components are merging, it is now
difficult to see a real split.
He then talked about the shifting world of IT, & how it must be leveraged
to get the best business value. As IT
moves to the strategic centre of business the model must shift to smarter
computing, traditional models have to change, as they lack agility &
responsiveness. Smarter Computing means expertise have to be built into these
systems, not just into the individuals that run them, the systems need to be
able to predict what is going to occur.

Stephen then took the audience through two reports, one Forrester &
one IBM, both of which had some really interesting statistics. He summarised
the Forrester report by saying that the “realities of what businesses can
afford today, are far from what they require”. The IBM report did show though that only one
in five companies have broken the mould, & are using half of their budget
on IT innovation, meaning they can use advance technologies better than others,
& deploy new solutions & technologies a lot faster than others.

Stephen then introduced IBMs new breed of system, which HAD the
expertise built in, from 100000s of deployments all over world & coding
them into one system, meaning the system does it for you, so you can release
experts to the innovation of your IT. This is integrated by design, with all
the components tightly connection through engineering & NOT packaging. Finally,
the experience is simplified; expertise is consolidated into a single interface
& having only one number to call when you have an issue!

The new
boxes were then unveiled by Tom Rosamilia (VP of Corporate Strategy) &
Marie Wieck (GM Application & Integration Middleware) to a rapturous
applause from the audience. Tom then took the audience through the first member
of the family – PureFlex – which is the base for PureApplications. He did a deeper dive into the components
Stephen had mentioned - about the built in expertise, the simplified experience
& the integration by design. Tom included some real client examples from a
bank, a manufacturing company, a retailer & a managed services company &
their forecasted savings, such as $2.6M savings in systems & OPEX costs,
$3.8M in software savings, 1 day or less to deploy new service which used to be
seven days & $2.8M lower IT costs.

Tom then took that audience through the anatomy of the new
systems, showing how it included one system for compute storage & systems
networking, a 4 chassis per rack scalable up to four racks, support for apps
across four operating environments & a secure start up for both physical &
virtual environments. Tom concluded his session included a demo of what he
termed a “four click deploy”.

Marie Wieck next took the audience through the other new member of the family –
the PureApplication System, & through how this new platform system is
“expert at optimally deploying & running apps in real time”. She talked
about how clients often struggle to “overcome barriers of time, cost &
risk”, & discussed the top causes for these project delays. Marie explained
to the audience how during the development of PureSystems, IBM wanted to look
at all aspects, including the management & the middleware, so clients can get
immediate benefit across the complete solution stack across the enterprise. Expertise
is built into the system, so best practice is capture from people who “deploy
the systems in complex environment & get them to scale”.

Marie went through a deeper dive of the three key components
mentioned by both Stephen & Tom, & how this was shown in the new
PureApplication system. This new systems will change buying patterns, you buy
it as if you would a piece of software, & can be up & running typically
within four hours (which was the target set to IBMs own development team). She
explained how the new system lets you capture your own expertise, add third
party apps of expertise & use IBM patterns of expertise throughout the
system.

The panel session was led by Steven Leonard – & featured John
Schlesinger, Chief Enterprise Architect, Temenos, Philippe Forestier, Executive
Vice President, Global Affairs & Communities, Dassault Systems, Niall
Norton, CEO, Opennet, Simon Withers, Head of Product Development, SunGard &
George Thaw - Chief Operating Officer UKI – SAP. Each panel member introduced
themselves & gave their opinion on PureSystems & the difference it will
make to their business & customers. Niall even stating that this new system
was “the answer to our prayers”.

As part of the Social Media team, we were taking questions from
Twitter – from those in the room as well as watching on the live stream - for
the panel, using the #askstephen. We had several submitted & Stephen asked
two of these to the panel, who gave very extensive answers, which you can see
on the lives stream video recording now available (see link below).

After the main session, delegates were able to have one to one
meetings with IBM executives, giving them the opportunity to ask any questions &
give feedback on what they have heard & seen earlier on in the day.

You can also follow @IBMPureSystems for worldwide updates on this
fantastic new offering from IBM. You can
read more blogs from the experts about Pure Systems here – http://expertintegratedsystemsblog.com/.

Please follow me on Twitter @RSwindell; to see updates from other
events I am involved in this year & beyond!